Wellington Oracle

Annie Hillis has her hands full these days. The executive director of the Wellington West BIA is helping to troubleshoot her second summer of road reconstruction disruptions along the district’s main street, and Phase 2 — the section from Parkdale to Hilda — is making last year’s “Phase 1″ along the stretch through Wellington Village look like a stroll in the park.

“We only lost one business to roadwork in West Wellington, but it’s a different situation altogether in Hintonburg –the narrow streets make it much more difficult for shoppers arriving by car to get around the digging”. Adding to the frustration of  the tight squeeze is the sheer length of the project. According to Hillis “merchants and residents are angry that so much of it was put out to tender all once, many say it would have been been much better to have this year’s work at stop at Merton”.

And with the mountains of rubble and constant movement of machinery making it impractical to invite beyond-the-district shoppers to keep patronizing local merchants, it appears to be up Hintonburg residents to do what they can to support their neighbourhood retail, or else, as Hillis says “we may not have many merchants left to support when the roadwork is over.”

The problem has been building over the summer  – Natalie Myles of the Elmdale House Tavern made a similar appeal in these pages in June — and  in response the  the Business Improvement Area has launched a campaign to encourage residents to use the street’s beleaguered shops and services before it is too late.

The centrepiece of the campaign will be postcard drop throughout the Hintonburg postal district; on the card residents can enter the details of a purchase they have made from a local merchant and make themselves eligible for monthly gift-certificate prizes worth 250 dollars from the WWBIA.

For more details, check the news release at the WWBIA site.